The Seventh Console Generation spanning 2005-2013 represented an exponential leap in realizing expansive interactive worlds on home consoles. More specifically, the PlayStation 3‘s 2007 launch served as a watershed moment for high definition open-ended escapism.
In this guide, we will explore the peaks of PS3 open world design across a variety of fantastic settings and gameplay genres. You‘ll discover what made these titles technically groundbreaking while retaining incredible playability even today.
Defining the Modern Open-World Game
The term "open-world" refers to vast 3D spaces players can freely navigate and approach objectives in a non-linear fashion. Core elements of the design philosophy include:
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Player Freedom and Agency: Tackling story beats and side content without set prerequisites or desired order. The player chooses their own path.
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A Living Game World: Environmental ecosystems,simulated inhabitant routines and dynamic time/weather transitions make the world feel authentic and lived-in.
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Emergent Gameplay: Unexpected scenarios organically develop from the interplay between game systems and player choice rather than scripted events.
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A Balance of Structure and Discovery: Hand-crafted narrative content complements freely roaming the world discovering random locales and secrets.
These ambitious games emphasize making players feel present in fully-realized places with autonomy over how they spend their time journeying through them.
The PlayStation 3 Hardware Leap
The PlayStation 3 massively expanded technical capabilities over the PS2 enabling developers to fulfill grander open world visions:
| Specification | PlayStation 2 | PlayStation 3 |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 294 MHz "Emotion Engine" | 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine |
| GPU | 147 MHz Graphics Synthesizer | 550 MHz Nvidia RSX |
| Memory | 32 MB Direct RDRAM | 256 MB XDR DRAM + 256MB GDDR3 VRAM |
| Storage Media | DVD 5.6 GB | Blu-Ray Disc 25 GB |
This generational leap particularly benefited open world games. More processing power handled increasingly complex game logic and behavioral AI. Superior graphics tech rendered intricately detailed environments. Additional memory stored higher-resolution art assets, animation data and audio. Blu-Ray discs contained all this world data psacked densely into a single disc.
These enhancements facilitated bigger spaces filled with more content at higher visual fidelity. Feature sets exponentially expanded compared to PS2 enabling new gameplay possibilities. titles. PlayStation 3 open worlds felt tangibly broader, deeper and more alive.
Now let‘s explore 7 superlative examples demonstrating the exponential evolution over their PS2 predecessors.
7. Saints Row: The Third
Volition‘s 2011 irreverent crime comedy Saints Row: The Third transports players into the outlandish metropolis of Steelport to wage turf war against rival syndicates. Unlike Rockstar‘s comparatively straight-faced Grand Theft Auto series, Saints Row proudly embraces absurdity from costume dress-up weaponry to vehicular surfing escorts to straight up zombie outbreaks.
The urban playground itself spans environments ranging from Chinatown to toxic waste plants facilitating this criminal chaos with few limits beyond your imagination. Reviewers praised Saints Row‘s dedication to unhinged gameplay variety and customization options yielding memorable player-driven moments:
"Saints Row: The Third offers an almost stupidly compelling world full of equally stupid, awesome things to do." – Destructoid
"I can practically guarantee that everyone who plays it will have their own suite of crazy anecdotes by the time they‘ve reached the end" – Eurogamer
While never reaching the stratospheric sales of Rockstar‘s juggernaut, Saints Row: The Third and its deliciously fun sequels won loyal fans through sheer creative insanity paired with dense world building. There are so many bizarre weapons and activities packed into Steelport, players will discover fresh surprises dozens of hours in.
Approach Saints Row to experience an irreverent flipside to the frequently self-serious open world crime genre. Let loose and embrace the chaos.
6. Sleeping Dogs
United Front Games‘ 2012 release Sleeping Dogs places players in brawling boots of undercover Hong Kong detective Wei Shen infiltrating the ruthless Sun On Yee triad organization. The story deftly balances simmering police procedural tension with hard-hitting martial arts action.
Sleeping Dogs resurrected concepts originally slated for Activision‘s cancelled True Crime sequels by transplanting open world crime drama to exotic Hong Kong. Vertical urban density offers intense parkour navigation filled with environmental weapon executions. Fluid kung fu systems chain strikes, counters and limb breaks together into visceral combos.
The city streets feel vibrant thanks to accurate cultural flavor, bustling night markets and blaring cantopop beats. There‘s no shortage urban Vice to dive into from street racing, cockfighting, karaoke bars, gambling dens to shady drug deals. Reviewers adored this authentic portrayal merging blockbuster entertainment with an intricately crafted setting:
"Special mention should go to the game‘s art direction and its excellent visual rendering of Hong Kong…a city full of vibrant colors, interesting interiors, and great urban density" – Hardcore Gamer
"Few virtual cities come close to packing as much cultural authenticity as Sleeping Dogs‘ Hong Kong" – Destructoid
Sleeping Dogs showed open world games didn‘t need to retread the same tired crime kingpin cliches by focusing its world building efforts toward an underrepresented perspective and locale. The passion behind its unmatched atmosphere, action and attention to detail make Sleeping Dogs an essential PS3 title.
5. Assassin‘s Creed IV: Black Flag
Pirates and open worlds go together like rum and powder kegs. So for the 6th Assassin‘s Creed entry, Ubisoft fully embraced that fantasuy by casting players as Welsh pirate captain Edward Kenway plundering the Caribbean open seas during the early 18th Century Golden Age of Piracy.
You‘ll rub elbows and swords with historical outlaws like Charles Vane, Ben Hornigold and Calico Jack while sailing between lush tropical islands on the hunt for booty and assassin targets alike. Ambitious naval navigation and warfare mechanics fully simulate operating wind-powered warships. Boarding enemy vessels to wreak swashbuckling havoc never loses its thrill dozens of hours in.
IGN praised Black Flag‘s vibrant piracy and called Ubisoft‘s incredibly detailed nautical open world "one of the greatest settings of this console generation":
"Ubisoft has delivered one of the greatest open world playgrounds ever seen in gaming" – VideoGamer
"As a pirate sandbox, Black Flag is second-to-none with a wonderfully rich world to explore both on land and at sea" – Destructoid
Beyond living the fantasy, Black Flag benefited enormously from next-generation graphical capabilities achieving unprecedented water physics, real-time naval damage and jaw dropping weather effects paired with absurd draw distances. Few games immerse players so completely or capture the romanticism of life on the high seas so compellingly. It remains the apex of virtual swashbuckling two console generations later.
4. Red Dead Redemption
Rockstar‘s 2010 open-world triumph Red Dead Redemption evokes a bygone era of American Outlaw cowboy shootouts across vividly rendered Wild Western plains during 1911. Former bandit John Marston begrudging straps spurs back on to chase down his former gang.
This premise facilitated Rockstar‘s signature brand of epic interactive storytelling only in a fresh frontier setting. Critics adored the writing, voice acting and relatable cast of gunslingers populating dusty cattle towns alongside larger-than-life heroes and villains – all amplified by a stunning soundtrack marrying instruments like harmonica and banjo perfectly with each locale.
IGN summed up Red Dead‘s excellently balanced pacing between impactful dramatic story beats and distraction-filled open world pursuits:
"A beautifully rendered, utterly expansive Old West playground that constantly keeps the tension between fighting for survival and fighting for money" – Digital Trends
"Read Dead Redemption blows me away with its artistry. There‘s a pulse and poetry to the world stretching in every direction." – Joystiq
Red Dead Redemption pioneered ambitious new benchmarks for reactive open worlds where emergent interactions produced wholly unscripted drama – like witnessing an unlikely friendship develop between a petty thief and sheriff over hours thanks to advanced AI systems. Te result was a glimpse into fading Old West life that suspended disbelief on unprecedented levels in 2010 thanks supreme worldbuilding artistry.
3 Batman Arkham City
Rocksteady Studios followed up 2009‘s critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum with 2011‘s direct sequel – Batman Arkham City. This entry ambitiously expanded the scope into a dense open world urban prison housing Gotham City‘s entire criminal population unleashing chaos upon chaos for the Dark Knight detective to contain.
Iconic rogues like The Joker, Penguin and Mr. Freeze all serve major roles for scheming everything from lethal hostage situations to weaponizing zombifying TITAN formula across the decaying superprison districts. Players grapple, glide and dive kick between burning choppers, ice-laden museums and crumbling courthouses in pursuit of restoring order to Arkham City against all odds and a dozen warring factions.
Reviewers universally praised City upon release for delivering an unmatched interactive Batman power fantasy letting players decide how best to investigate this criminal-run municipality on their own terms:
“This amazingly vibrant, organic and fun world is the star of this game” – Destructoid on Arkham City‘s Game World
“Arkham City brings to vivid life the moodiness, grittiness and unpredictability we expect from fine Batman yarns” – Game Informer
Batman Arkham City remains unmatched in open world superhero games for entrusting players with the tools and freedom to clean up streets however they deem fit. Unparalled world building convincingly realizes Gotham‘s most notorious rogues controlling their own domains packed with fascinating environmental storytelling. Arkham City stands the test of time as the quintessential Batman simulator.
2. Grand Theft Auto V
By 2013, Rockstar Games had refined open world design into an exacting science across multiple beloved franchises. Their 8th installment in the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto series represented an apex of the form, realized through a deliberately focused perspective centered on just three distinct protagonists scraped by at civilization‘s edge in the sunbaked state of San Andreas.
The narrative framed by retired heist artist Michael, streetwise hoodlum Franklin and unhinged ex-military pilot Trevor examined modern America‘s dark underbelly through a criminal lens skewing darkly comedic. Their intersecting ambitions send players carjacking across the economic breadth of Los Santos and Blaine county encompassing everything from Vinewood Hills to meth trailer devastation.
IGN summarized just how staggeringly ambitious and historically significant this dynamic open world opus stood in 2013:
“GTAV is not only the best open-world game of the past decade, it’s likely to be the standard by which such games are judged for a long time to come”
“Los Santos isn’t just the most complex, detailed and riveting city Rockstar has created to date – it’s the virtual world with the most new content and activity in it that we’ve ever seen in a game.”
Rockstar leveraged seventh generation technical capabilities to their limits realizing staggering player-driven emergent moments paired with unmatched environment authenticity and Hollywood production polish. Even mundane commutes morph into unexpectedly anarchic scenarios within seconds thanks to world density.
Grand Theft Auto V earned its reputation as the definitive open world crime simulator through uncompromising technical prowess at odds with its biting cultural satire deconstructing capitalism‘s futility. By pairing philosophical undertones with peerless interactive freedom, GTAV became an instant classic destined to influence game design for decades hence.
1. Grand Theft Auto IV
Before subsequent iterations expanded features and scope asymptotically, Rockstar achieved a high watermark for nonlinear crime fiction focused on the human condition rather than wanton mayhem with 2008‘s Grand Theft Auto IV.
Unique Russian-Serbian protagonist Niko Bellic emigrates to Liberty City conned by exotic tales of the American Dream from his rosy-eyed cousin. The pair quickly descend into organized crime‘s chaos as Niko grapples with disillusionment. GTA IV wove themes surrounding the false promise of social mobility for immigrants into unprecedented character drama for the medium.
This narrativetook place in Rockstar‘s staggering recreation of New York CIty with intricately detailed metropolitian neighborhoods, contextual ambient dialogue between passerbys and infrastructure quirks like service pattern signage replicated citywide with scary accuracy. Moving through it feels eerily akin to reality itself.
The New York Times applauded these advancements upon release for reaching new storytelling heights paired with a benchmark setting virtual world:
“Liberty City has finally started to live up to its name…no other game city comes close in depth and breadth combined”
“Niko‘s story matches the best in The Sopranos for insight into the criminal mindset”
GTA IV avoided open world cliches by rooting is gritty narrative in the realities of modern urban class divides paired with a staggering rendition of New York City itself. The advanced crowds, physics systems and unmatched ambient worldbuilding achieve true virtual placehood unmatched to this day. For these reasons and masterful storytelling impossible in other mediums, Grand Theft Auto IV reached an apex for nonlinear interactive drama whose legacy persists across generations.
